sharond95

italianemperor wrote:I bought a ton from plus deals and woot-offs because I hade free shipping that day. Now you are completely removing any motivation for me to buy impulse items during a woot off or plus deals. The cart only makes it easier for Woot and not the customer. Pretty stupid idea, and you are losing sales.

Completely agree! I bought a couple items in one 'cart full' last night and stopped buying. This morning, I checked out the w00t plus stuff, and made a multiple item purchase only because I was hoping for something to show up again and it did (bought 10 so it's actually worth the extra $5). I won't be keeping tabs on the w00t0ff today because of the new shipping policy. No more free-shipping-impulse-buys for me.

retom7

Well, Woot! and Amazon were once my two favorite sites. While still the sites I use the most, I hate the changes that have been made. Amazon itself has changed and offers far less in the deals department, the video game section used to include rebates for future game purchases (no longer competitive to other retailers), shipping rarely hits the 2-day mark for Prime (and I live in NY, not the middle of nowhere), etc.

Disappointed to see that Woot! is changing as well. $5 per item during Woot! Offs completely kills any deal. I am not sure where the "stupid low prices" comment comes from as typically your deals now are no better than most online retailers, and in some cases, higher. It's a shame your software developers can't just figure out a way to bundle it all together at the end of a business day and refund the shipping on all orders after the first one. My items are sent out days later in most cases.

Anyway, it's a shame and to put that along side of the repetitive deals, and it seems like Woot! is changing to a company that I won't be using often.

editorkid

So I wonder how many people who are bitching about the "new" shipping policy have also complained about how "Woot should return to its roots," because the "new" shipping policy is Woot's roots. Until the $5/day policy was announced, it was $5 per item, thank you very much. So you got your wish on this one!

MrbLOB9000

I was already getting slightly grumpy that Woot is owned by Amazon and having prime doesn't matter, especially when it comes in an amazon box no less! Cheaper stuff is often a decent deal if shipping was free but unless I want three of them, then shipping makes it kind of a meh deal. And now this... on normal days I suppose that's fine and normal and not a big deal (unless what you're wanting to order sells out while you're trying to load up the card...) but woot-off days this new policy is murder.

highvolt82

editorkid wrote:So I wonder how many people who are bitching about the "new" shipping policy have also complained about how "Woot should return to its roots," because the "new" shipping policy is Woot's roots. Until the $5/day policy was announced, it was $5 per item, thank you very much. So you got your wish on this one!

Except their prices/deals were a lot better back in the day. The new (old) shipping policy makes about 30% (being generous) of what is now being offered during woot-offs completely cost-prohibitive.

tiffikat

I had been watching the woot-off today with some interest. I will not be shopping woot-offs from now on. The $5 all day shipping always caused me to purchase items I may not have before during a woot-off since it would be a good deal (and woot usually didn't lose anything because my items were almost always shipped together). Now it's not worth it. I can imagine that woot is going to see very quickly that the sales during this woot-off are drastically lower than previous woot-offs. This is not a good business decision woot.

chuckoben

I buy a ton of stuff from Woot because they are usually well priced and I could order throughout the day knowing I was looking at one $5 shipping charge. This morning is when I first noticed that the $5 one time charge was gone (sadly) and I quickly emptied my adorable new shopping cart. Good try on Woot's part trying to paint this pig. I won't stop buying from Woot, I'll just be buying less with the new shipping policy. It cracks me up that the reason being used to eliminate the one day $5 charge is because we now get our very own shopping cart!

editorkid

highvolt82 wrote:Except their prices/deals were a lot better back in the day. The new (old) shipping policy makes about 30% (being generous) of what is now being offered during woot-offs completely cost-prohibitive.

And you've got some tenure here, but I still need to take you with a huge grain of salt, since you haven't yet bought 10 things in all those years. Even the glorious old days weren't worth participating in?

fourtyjr

Wow. Super bummed about this. Not only does this take away huge amounts of my interest in woot offs, but I didn't actually notice until I had made two impulse buys during today's. Probably wouldn't have bought either one had I realized that I was going to have to pay shipping on everything all day.

highvolt82

editorkid wrote:And you've got some tenure here, but I still need to take you with a huge grain of salt, since you haven't yet bought 10 things in all those years. Even the glorious old days weren't worth participating in?

Well, if you must know Mr. Detective, I used to order through my ex's account.

fourtyjr

editorkid wrote:So I wonder how many people who are bitching about the "new" shipping policy have also complained about how "Woot should return to its roots," because the "new" shipping policy is Woot's roots. Until the $5/day policy was announced, it was $5 per item, thank you very much. So you got your wish on this one!

Yeah, I'm aware it's their roots, and I didn't really participate in woot-offs or buy anything below about $20 back then either. Just because it's their "roots" doesn't make it preferable.

NascarDad

editorkid wrote:And you've got some tenure here, but I still need to take you with a huge grain of salt, since you haven't yet bought 10 things in all those years. Even the glorious old days weren't worth participating in?

Interest in woot was flagging for me and several other people I know. Other deal sites, and just spending less in general. The $5 all you can ship got me interested again, and I bought a lot more in the time we had the $5 all you can ship than the full year previous to that, about 25-30% more orders, despite being online a lot less last year due to family health issues, and despite the fact I can't buy wine in my state anymore.

If woot doesn't want our increased interest or business, and doesn't want these new customers, so be it, we can all part, woot can do whatever it likes and we don't have to shop here anymore.

kmashaney

editorkid wrote:And you've got some tenure here, but I still need to take you with a huge grain of salt, since you haven't yet bought 10 things in all those years. Even the glorious old days weren't worth participating in?

NascarDad

kmashaney wrote:We could do what Anonymous does and just tell everyone not to come to the site for 24hrs.

Not spending our money will get our point across better than just regurgitating previous poster's comments. However, that would have to be a true community effort.

Can we all come together for an E-Revolution?!

What I considered doing was removing my credit card number. It is a pain because I also have to remove the address as well and might involve me having to put back my address if I happen upon something I want to buy.

If a lot of people removed their credit cards/payment info , they might notice sooner than just realizing they aren't selling as much stuff as they used to sell.

fgarriel

why not just aggregate the items on the backend at the end of the day? This is essentially the same as unlocking free shipping, except that it doesn't handle woot-offs neatly.

It's not like you're pick-n-packing on the same day as the sale/order.

I'm really having trouble seeing the user story for this cart where there's a benefit to either seller or buyer. *Maybe* there's a story there for wanting to clump items into orders, but at what cost to existing business model?

Woot's really gone to s*** with most deals not being great deals, but I understood that it may not have been sustainable (i.e., it was just building market share at the expense of profitability). This cart thing I don't get at all.

Maybe it's a fulfillment expense reduction story? Surely there was a better way to meet this need.

jmminch

Just to add my own note: Woot lost at least a couple sales from me today due to this change too. I had started to order, then happened to see the note about the shipping change and cancelled -- it wasn't worth the price if I wasn't going to get free shipping for other woot-off items.

Furthermore, you don't have to be so insulting to our intelligence in your announcement. You're not getting rid of the $5 shipping because now you have a shopping cart, or because your prices are so low that your customers don't care about shipping. You're doing it because you want to make more money. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't; but don't try to spin it like it's something that benefits your customers.

With free or low-priced shipping so ubiquitous in online shopping now, though, it's going to make woot's products a much tougher sell. In particular, since you will essentially have to pay $5 for every woot-off item, that's going to kill any impulse buys where I may have otherwise been on the fence.

MacGarage

On a normal day, the new shopping cart actually works nice compared to having to go and order other items one at a time.

However, during a Woot-Off, it really makes it impossible to enjoy the Woot-Off experience.

How many of us keep our iPhones/iPads at our sides during a Woot-Off to grab that quick deal and then back to the hunt? The new shopping cart removes that fun and also the main purpose I enjoyed Woot-Offs...the feeling of getting a bunch of great bargains.

Perhaps they can open up the $5 daily shipping for Woot-Offs?

I noticed another daily site now offers free shipping on everything...perhaps that is another way to too.

The bottom line is despite the lower sales, they probably will recoup that in the new shipping charges so I really doubt we will see a change.

NascarDad

fgarriel wrote:why not just aggregate the items on the backend at the end of the day? This is essentially the same as unlocking free shipping, except that it doesn't handle woot-offs neatly.

It's not like you're pick-n-packing on the same day as the sale/order.

I'm really having trouble seeing the user story for this cart where there's a benefit to either seller or buyer. *Maybe* there's a story there for wanting to clump items into orders, but at what cost to existing business model?

Woot's really gone to s*** with most deals not being great deals, but I understood that it may not have been sustainable (i.e., it was just building market share at the expense of profitability). This cart thing I don't get at all.

Maybe it's a fulfillment expense reduction story? Surely there was a better way to meet this need.

I am guessing it is simply number crunching. Their profit margin went down and overall increase wasn't good enough to justify. And now that it looks like the patent trolls can't sue people for using shopping carts online like they used to, shopping carts shouldn't be that much more expensive..

NascarDad

MacGarage wrote:The bottom line is despite the lower sales, they probably will recoup that in the new shipping charges so I really doubt we will see a change.

Cant make a shipping charge on stuff you don't sell. Oh sure, they nailed a few people today for 5 extra bucks when they thought they wudl be unlocking free shipping, but that won't last more than one or two more woot-offs.

People will not react well to the new/old policy. And disgruntled customers become ex-customers rather quickly. Woot is not like gasoline, demand for woot monkeys not as inelastic as for fuel.

editorkid

fourtyjr wrote:Yeah, I'm aware it's their roots, and I didn't really participate in woot-offs or buy anything below about $20 back then either. Just because it's their "roots" doesn't make it preferable.

Oh, I agree with you... that's actually my point. But there are insanely long threads going deep into Woot's history about how every change, down to the color of the text, is an abandonment of everything Woot ever stood for. I'm not the sort of basement dweller who'd go through those threads and compare then to this thread to see if anyone was contradicting themselves, but on the unlikely chance that anyone who might have done that would notice, well, I said it.

(And for me, from the beginning, wootoffs were a chance to grab something I missed when it was a regular offering for whatever reason. If I missed something and it came up later in a wootoff, I'd be happy to pay the $5 to actually have Woot! ship it to me. Now it's that plus, on the food options, a chance to restock on stuff I liked.)

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